Among the information revealed by the disastrous Sony documents leak, of most interest to comics types is a series of emails in which Sony and Marvel discussed a Spidey crossover. . This was widely rumored earlier this year, and yep it was true. Studio head Amy Pascal and Sony Pictures president Doug Belgrad discussed an offer from Marvel to produce a new trilogy of Spider-man movies, and a possible appearances for the webslinger in Captain America: Civil War. But alas:

The talks with Marvel eventually broke down and Sony is now planning to go ahead with its own Spider-Man slate, according to people familiar with the matter. As of late November, executives were planning a “Spidey summit” for January to discuss future plans. Among projects in development are an animated Spider-Man comedy that would be produced by Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the team behind “22 Jump Street” and “The Lego Movie,” as well as previously disclosed Spider-Man spin-offs focused on villain team Sinister Six, super-foe Venom, and women from the webslinger’s life.

So yeah, Spider-Man remains in Sony’s web—however while may Spiderverse spin-offs are being discussed, the actual Andrew Garfield-led main franchise seems to be MIA.

The failure of the Civil War talks is especially sad because, as you may recall, Spider-Man played a particularly large part in the comics version.

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

the problem with “civil war” was that the writers had to change the personalities of half the characters in the story to make it work, the biggest example being spider-man. for years they wrote the character as being a very smart guy , closely guarding his secret identity , knowing that if revealed , the revelation could put his family and friends at great risk. so what do the writers do, they turn peter parker into a dumb-ass that goes ahead , revels his secret identity, which causes someone near and dear to him to be shot to death (which leads to “brand new day”, in which parker continues his streak as a dumb-ass, along with the extra added bonus of being less of a hero for making a deal with the devil instead of making the hard choices which, while painful, is what heroes do, as to not compromise their ideals and values). spider-man in the marvel movie universe (MMU) which include the avengers under the context of “civil war” would not work either. in the MMU, there are no secret identities (which i would gather would make it hard for stark or rogers to go out for a cup of coffee without being stalked and shot by a sniper, but this is how they want to play it) , so all the heroes in the MMU would go to war over one guy? unless a whole mess of super heroes with secret identities show up (which ain’t gonna happen) , this scenario doesn’t make much sense. marvel likes to brag about how close to reality the MU and the MMU is , so with that in mind if spidey did show up and and he refused to reveal his identity , instead of a major brawl between heroes in the streets, the whole mess would more than likely be fought in court with a challenge to the regristration act. probably all the way up to SCOTUS. and it would probably take years for the case to get to those guys and gals. but of course that would make for a boring comic book ( well maybe not for matt murdock or jennifer walters), but the whole idea of super heroes running around pummeling each other over a civil rights issue in the “close to reality as possible ” MU made very little sense, to me anyway. it will be interesting to see how they handle “civil war” in the next captain america movie, but i’m glad they’re not gonna go with the spider-man aspect of the story.